1. Field
The present disclosure pertains to the field of information processing, and more particularly, to the field of partitioning information processing systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, the concept of partitioning in information processing systems refers to dividing a system into partitions, where each partition is a group of system resources that may be operated as a complete and independent system. The system resources that may be allocated to a partition include processors, processor cores (where individual cores of a multicore processor may be allocated to different partitions), portions of system memory, and input/output (“I/O”) and other peripheral devices. Different types of partitioning are known.
In “soft” partitioning, system resources may be shared between partitions. One form of soft partitioning is virtualization, which allows multiple instances of one or more operating systems (each, an “OS”) to run on a single system, even though each OS is designed to have complete, direct control over the system and its resources. Soft partitioning typically requires using a single virtual machine monitor or hypervisor to directly control the whole system, enforce the sharing of system resources, and present an abstraction of a complete, unshared system to any other such software or OS running on the system.
In “hard” partitioning, each system resource is typically dedicated to a respective partition. Hard partitioning provides for any OS, virtual machine monitor, hypervisor, or other such software to be run in each partition and directly control the system resources of its partition.